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Optical Sensors and Sensing Congress

Optical Light Shift for Vector Vapor Magnetometry

Janet W. Lou, Seth J. Meiselman, Geoffrey A. Cranch

Published Jan 1, 2019• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The optical frequency of the light shift effect for an optically-pumped vapor vector magnetometer is shown to cause an angular error when it is tuned near the absorption resonance, countering the benefit of higher response.
DOI
10.1364/sensors.2019.sw6c.3

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Atomic vapor magnetometers have demonstrated very high sensitivity to the magnitude of the magnetic field. Vector field measurements are possible using bias fields applied to the vapor. For remote operation, the bias field can be generated using the optical light shift (LS) effect created with an optical beam delivered through optical fiber. Here, it is shown that the optical frequency of the LS effect for an optically pumped vapor vector magnetometer causes an angular error in the measured field orientation when it is tuned near the absorption resonances, countering the benefit of higher response. This angle-shifting effect is dependent on the LS beam power. The LS response, normalized to the LS power, is higher for lower powers due to a saturation effect but also shows a dependence on the LS optical frequency. We show that it is necessary to carefully choose the LS optical frequency and power to maximize the LS effect while avoiding potential angular error.
Light shift arising from the circularly polarized pump beam in atomic magnetometers can induce an undesired magnetic response, and thus affect their accuracy. Here, the light shift and the corresponding cross-talk effect in the magnetometer have been investigated, and a scheme with an additional off-resonant pump beam with an appropriate polarization and intensity has been proposed to effectively reject the light shift. And the experimental results reproduce the expected behavior. This scheme provides a powerful tool to reject the light shift in optical pumping systems, in particular, the hybrid optically pumped systems.
The light shift represents a major source of measurement error and system noise in optically pumped atomic magnetometers (OPAMs). Tuning the laser frequency to a specific value is a common and effective approach to suppressing light shift in many optical-pumping systems. However, when this method is applied to OPAMs, a significant issue arises: at the zero-light-shift frequency, the magnetometer’s sensitivity decreases markedly. Consequently, it is not possible to optimize simultaneously both the measurement accuracy affected by the light shift and the overall sensitivity of the magnetometer. To address this contradiction, the underlying mechanism was analyzed using the theory of light absorption and the principles governing light–atom interactions, leading to the proposal of a dual-frequency optical-pumping scheme. Experimental results demonstrate that this approach can suppress the light shift by more than 95% while maintaining the optimal sensitivity of the OPAM. The proposed dual-frequency scheme can also be extended to other circularly polarized optical-pumping systems, thereby facilitating both the enhancement of OPAM performance and its practical deployment in real-world applications.
The optical light shift effect is an all-optical technique to create magnetic bias fields to determine the vector components of the magnetic field using a scalar optically pumped magnetometer. We show that the measurement of the induced bias fields is affected by the response pattern of the scalar magnetometer. The sensitivity of the magnetometer affects the minimum total field resolution as well as the angular resolution of the vector measurement. Three configurations of multiple-laser, optically pumped cesium vapor vector magnetometers are characterized for their spatial sensitivity patterns. Each configuration has a unique response level as a function of the relative magnetic field orientation. Thus, the formulations used for angular determination are dependent on the magnetometer configuration, and the angular resolution of the vector measurement is dependent on the relative angle between the magnetic field and the optical probe beam. The spatial dependence of the light shift signals is measured, and the equations describing their responses are presented for each configuration. Equations for determining the field angles from the bias field responses are derived.
The light shift is an important error source for atomic magnetometers. It would vanish if the frequency of the circularly polarized light is tuned to the optical resonance center. For high-density alkali-metal atomic magnetometers, the vapor cell has a large optical depth near the resonance, resulting in the difficulty in obtaining the exact resonance center by measuring the optical absorption line. In order to solve this problem, we propose a method to tune the pump light to a frequency where the shift is minimum based on the magnetic field zeroing technique. In addition, we also compare our results with the fitting center of the optical absorption line based on the measurement data far detuned from the resonance. The experimental results show that our method achieves a better suppression result of the light shift.